It's Like You're Dying
by Aspen Snow
Summary: Lincoln is running out of time. A growing collection of insights into the mind of a man who is dying.
1. Hopeless Time To Roam

**Hopeless Time To Roam **

He is afraid of dying forever. It's why his hands shake. It's why he wakes up sometimes quiet, sometimes screaming, but always with a sudden jerk of movement.

Dying itself is a momentary thing, he thinks, it's the forever part that really gets him, the nothing new, nothing old, nothing in between, the nothing at _all_ that makes him sweat and desperate and want to pray to a God he doesn't even believe in.

He's going to close his eyes and go to sleep. That's how he's going to die. So he doesn't sleep anymore because it feels like some morbid kind of dress rehearsal. He already knows that he is going to die; he doesn't want to know what it feels like too.

In church Michael puts a hand on his shoulder and tells him to have a little faith.

_In what_ is the question he wants to ask when he turns around but Michael is already gone and his words find nothing but empty space. Which is fine, he thinks, because Michael always needed to _believe_.

The he's chauffeured out of the church in shackles and chains, an innocent man. He's got one less day to live.

He isn't going to sleep tonight.

OOO

He breathed in her laughter once, kissed her when her eyes were warm and her dimples were flashing in amusement. He kissed her with her head thrown back and her arms thrown carelessly around his neck. He breathed in all that airy laughter because he'd never been that carefree.

He still tastes it sometimes, her laughter. It was all heated sweetness and breathless sunshine. She was everything easy and gentle and innocent and he thinks that maybe his calloused fingers were too rough on all those soft things.

The last time he saw her there were tear drops on her lips and creases of pain in her skin.

He breathed in her laughter once and he wishes he were selfless enough to give it back.

OOO

His son has his eyes. It's why he wants him there before he dies. He wants to know, has to know, that some part of him will live on after he dies.

He feels guilty for that because his son is already apathetic and angry and he doesn't need to know that no one lives forever. But the warden was right and he does want the image of the one thing in this world that was _his_ burned into him before he dies. And he knows that it's an image he will never have a chance to remember and he knows that his son will only ever see him dying for the rest of his life.

But he's selfish enough to want it anyways. So he adds innocence to list of things he has taken away from his son and moves on.

His son has eyes and it's his fault.

OOO

He put a hand on his brother's shoulder and told him to have a little faith. His brother looked up at him with shaky eyes and ragged breaths and _believed_ him.

He breaks a little right then. He was a kid who had to stretch himself across years of time and experience to become a man and he found himself spread too thin in too many places. His new skin is lonely and he isn't flexible enough to deal with all the responsibility. His eyes are still too small to see the whole picture and his little brother exists only in his peripheral vision.

It was inevitable then, what happened next. He fucked everything up, got himself sent to prison, a death sentence around his neck and broken promises chasing after him. But in his peripheral vision he can see the focused intense _unwavering_ eyes of his little brother and he thinks that maybe that little bit of faith will get him through it all.

The day he sees Michael standing in the shadows of a prison church he breaks into a thousand pieces of sharp regret that he is sure will hurt more than dying.

The little boy in the too big black suit with the sad eyes and the _belief_ is going to die in this place and he's not sure he can live with that.

OOO

He was going to die with her laughter in his lungs and a pair of eyes in his memory. He was going to die with his little brother still in the peripheral of his vision safe and sound somewhere that he _couldn't_ see.

He still _is_ going to die.

But now his little brother is trying to _fix_ it.

And that's tragic and heartbreaking and _so_ wrong. Because he's afraid to sleep and surely, _surely_ Michael knows now that fear is more than just air. By now he knows that it's a tangible thing that chokes and paralyzes and kills.

He was the kid who _had_ to become a man. Michael was supposed to just be the kid.

He isn't going to sleep tonight.


	2. Four Snapshots

**Four Snapshots  
**

**1.  
**_"What are you doing?"  
"I want to remember this."  
"No─"  
"Oh come on─ come on V just one?"  
_  
Her voice is nothing but artificial static in his ear. She sits so close he can see the change in her face; he imagines the razor sharp angles would slice him open if he touched her. There are no tears in her eyes. There is no sheen of sadness, no damp hope.

She is sitting so close he can see the absolute conviction. She _knows _he is guilty. She's got her elbows resting on the counter and she is leaning in so close her forehead nearly touches the glass. She's so close there's no space between them anymore. When he looks at her now he can't see the tangled sheets and naked skin and the laughter.

He wants to remember her head on his shoulder and her fingers on his chest but she's too close, she is smothering all the warmth between them and there is no space left for his memories.

**  
2.  
**_"Okay but, what if something happens to you?"  
"You just─ have a little faith."_

When Michael visits he sits a couple of feet away from the partition. It's a deliberate thing, the way he _moves_ the chair every time. When Lincoln tells him that he is going to be executed in three weeks he is afraid that the real meaning of those words is lost in that intentional space.

Because what he is really saying is that only _innocent_ men can be executed. But Michael doesn't hear that and his eyes are wet with a bitter mix of grief and betrayal. Michael asks for a promise and Lincoln wants to give him one but he is afraid it won't make it through all that space._  
_

**3.**  
_"I love you. I've always loved you."  
"This whole thing─ I don't know if I can take it."  
_  
The first time he touches his son it's only pieces of contact through metal bars. But then LJ shifts in his chair and Lincoln is left with only the metal.

He tells his son that he loves him. LJ's eyes water and his breath hitches and Lincoln hates that he understands why he tries so hard to hold it all in. The two of them are strangers related only because Lincoln fucked up once a long time ago and he's only ever been nothing to the son that shouldn't have been his.

So when LJ doesn't say _I love you_ back Lincoln pushes his fingers through the metal bars to find more pieces to touch and he tries not to feel guilty for waiting until he was dying to love his son.

**4.**  
_"I'll do it alone."  
_  
Lincoln isn't an innocent man. He is innocent of this one particular crime, but he's committed others. He was going to end up here anyways, which is why he gives that piece of paper back to the warden blank. He doesn't want anyone to see him die, he's been dead to everyone he loves for a long time anyways.

They've all seen him in this place, handcuffed in a cage, leaving his fingerprints on the glass with all the other doomed men who came before him. They've all seen him shuffle, they have all seen him pushed and prodded by prison guards back to a cell where he waits to die.

He isn't afraid of dying. He's learned there are worse things than no longer being alive.


End file.
